Today I'm going to talk about Netflix Instant Watching. This service is sort of free and sort of not. If you're a Netflix subscriber, you've got access to it, but if you're not, there's no way you can get in. (Unless a friend who belongs to Netflix is kind enough to invite you over to their house to take a peek at it.)
This service basically allows you to watch some of the movies and TV shows that Netflix rents without actually having to get the DVD's in the mail. They have to contract with the individual studios to make this possible, so the movies available tend to be from small independent companies or from other countries. The TV shows tend to be old series that have been out on DVD for a while, like Magnum, P.I., or else cult favorites that didn't have enough of a market to justify continuing making the DVD's. Sliders is one of these shows. The DVD's sold so poorly that they didn't bother to release seasons 4 and 5. But yet there are some fans out there who would give their eyeteeth to be able to watch these seasons. Netflix, recognizing that many people wouldn't bother to start watching the series on DVD if they knew they could never finish, has made seasons 4 and 5 (along with the first 3 seasons at all) available through Instant Watching. So now everyone is happy, and they don't have to take up a lot of warehouse space with discs that probably few people would actually request.
NBC has made things even a little more interesting this fall. They have allowed Netflix to put up new episodes from this season of Heroes as soon as they air, instead of waiting for the whole season to come out on DVD at some point. Of course, you could watch these episodes online at NBC anyway, but the advantage is that on Netflix Instant Watching they never go away, whereas they disappear from the NBC site after 4 weeks. I also think they are probably commercial-free on the Netflix site, although I've never tried watching one to find out.
Like I said, all the content on Netflix Instant Watching is "free," with two caveats. One, of course you really are paying for it with your Netflix subscription fees, and two, you get capped at a certain number of hours of watching each month, equal to the number of dollars you pay for your membership. (For instance, my plan costs $14 a month, so I get 14 hours of free video every month.) In reality, I've never hit my cap, and I don't think most people do, so this is something of an invisible barrier.
The consensus right now seems to be that at some point Netflix will start selling plans that only allow access to instant watching, but because their offerings there are quite thin right now, I don't see that happening in the near future. However, if you already have Netflix and haven't explored this part of their site, I'd urge you to do so. You never know what interesting things you might find!
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
No comments:
Post a Comment